Are You My Mother?: How Animal Imprinting Works

What do little baby ducklings have to do with Nazis? A lot actually. Find out about animal imprinting experiments and the debate over their ethics.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles Woody, Took Bryant. Get your imprinting
all over me? Stop? Is that? What is that what

(00:21):
I'm doing? Yeah, you're rubbing your feathers all over me
a feather duster that I'm tickling you with, bokeing me
with your beak. I'm not your parents, you know that's right?
Thank God. What a weird intro that was. Yeah, that
was a scene. That's called animal imprinting. I'm sure we've
talked about this before, but is it a scene or

(00:43):
end scene? Really? Joe ran dazzo to weigh in on
this one, but now we don't it's and scene. Um
sure comment. I'm positive we have talked about this, and
I know we have, but I don't remember the outcome. Well,
it was me saying it's a scene for sure, and
you're going, sure, that's why we're talking about it again. Okay,
it's antsen. So animal imprinting, it's a thing. It is.

(01:06):
It's uh in the strictest definition, it is only for birds. Yeah,
and specific type of birds called precocial birds. Yeah, they're
very precocial exactly. That means that they hatch out the
egg and look around and start waddling, and they're like, oh, look,
this is water. I think I have this weird and
they urge to get in there and swim, and oh,

(01:29):
here's a little bit of duck food. I think I'll
eat some of that because I have a drive to
do that. But what is that wonderful smell? Oh? I
think this might be the duck that gave birth to
me or laid me as an egg, and now I'm
going to imprint myself on you. It's either that or
it's a grown human man. Yeah, it can't be anything,

(01:51):
especially with ducks, but especially specifically. Precocial birds have a
process where they form an attachment to a parent, and
it's been shown over time that that parent doesn't necessarily
have to be a biological parent. It can not even
be in the same species. It doesn't even have to

(02:12):
be a living thing. No, it can be a toy train, yes,
it can be, or a pair of gum boot yeah. Um.
And humans have known for a very long time about
this process. It just wasn't until like the nineteen hundreds
that we started to get a um a real grip
on it. But like apparently in UH, there's a Roman
treatise around I guess, like the thirties, in the real thirties,

(02:37):
I mean like thirty c E. Not no, like thirty
not the swing in thirties, UM, and it's it basically
says like, if you want to train some wild ducks,
go get yourself some duck eggs, put them under a
hen that you have domesticated, and that handle raised those
ducks is their own and they'll be unwild in UH.
In rural China, back in the day, rice farmers would

(03:00):
imprint new ducks with a stick so they could then
use that stick to guide them out to their rice
population where they would eat snails right the rice population.
So they literally following this stick around like it's their parents.
So they would lead them to UH to help to
work for them basically, And the whole thing is is
the stick was what they were introduced to at a

(03:23):
very specific time in their life, usually within a couple
of hours, and they said, stick, you're my mom. I'm
gonna follow you everywhere. When you're not around, we're gonna
freak out. It's so weird. Yeah, it's and and ducks
are a really great um. They're like a classic example
of imprinting because they're very emotional creatures um, And they

(03:45):
form very strong attachments, and they're very social creatures. So
either they're all those things because they form very strong
imprinted bonds, or they form very strong imprinted bonds because
of all those things. Yeah, well, I think it's a
natural selection at work. So that's the that's the at
the heart of this whole thing is you know, is

(04:06):
it nature versus nurture? And imprinting is a really great
natural experiment to investigate the whole thing. And what it
seems like we found is that it's both that apparently,
especially specifically precocial ducks are hardwired to go seek out
and form an attachment, but depending on what they encounter
at the time e g. Their environment, also known as nurture. UM,

(04:29):
they can form that attachment with a stick or a
toy train or a Nazi. It's very cute actually when
you think about it, you know, they're just like, love
me whatever, hand puppet. What was that Dr. Seuss book?
I think it was Love Me hand Puppet? I think

(04:49):
it was Are you My Mother? Like Horton makes an
appearance in it. It's like some animals walking around like
are you my mother? Yeah, it is pretty said, but
it's it's basically a doctor who's book about imprinting. Oh cool,
well you mentioned Nazis, so to me, that's my que
Two segue into the life of Conrad with A. K. Lawrence,

(05:13):
who was Austrian born at the turn of the century
in h three and um. He was big into animals
and he studied regular medicine and then decided this is great.
Humans are fun, but I'm really into studying animals and
their behaviors. That was his bag, so he became a zoologist.

(05:34):
He did. He got a PhD in nineteen thirty three
and started work alongside Oscar Heinroff, who was a fellow
scientist with what it was the Austrian or German. I'm
not sure, he's probably one of the two. Well, so
Lawrence is working, he's already established himself as a scientist
when the Nazis come marching into town and one of

(05:55):
the things, yeah, one of the things he had to
answer four years later when he won the nobe L
Prize for his imprinting work was his um zeal And
enthusiasm basically with which he welcomed the conquering Nazis yea,
and took his ideas about domestication and applied them to

(06:17):
the lens of Nazi theory. Yeah. Race, like Conrad Lawrence
was a racist in the purest and violist form of
the word. Yes, it's there's no escaping that. No. And
he uh, he flat out denied even being a party
member until it was proven, and then he was like, oh,
I was forgot about that membership, and he very much

(06:39):
tried to to wiggle his way out of that years later,
um by saying, you know, I think what how it
ends up is he's not the only academic that was
on the wrong side of history, and he came out
years later, so like, oh yeah, but I sort of
got swept up. I didn't really mean it in this way.
And science has kind of divided. Some people forgave him

(07:02):
and others did not. Yeah, and it's um, I think
science as a whole has forgiven him largely, like science
of the capitals. But there are plenty of scientists out
there who are like the guy was a Nazi and
he used his theories to help the Nazi regime, Like
He was a Nazi psychologist in Austria who um was

(07:22):
paid to examine um German Polish uh people, Yes, and
and basically determined that like the the um mating of
a German person and a Polish person produces undesirable offspring.
Well you throw that out into the Nazi void and
see what they do with that info. Yeah, they're not

(07:44):
gonna be mating with Polish people. So this guy is
is he was a an evolutionary theorist of a very
brilliant magnitude great zoologist, but also Nazi and a lot
of people calling a question like the work that he
produced um, but again, as a whole, science seems to
have forgiven him for the most part. Yeah, that's a

(08:04):
that's a great sort of a c o A. It's
more like the more you know type of thing you
got to make the star exactly. So uh that aside,
Let's get back to his work with Oscar Heinroth Um
they were contemporaries and heind Roth he was actually the
first dude, even though he didn't call it imprinting at

(08:25):
the time. He's the German word, Uh progun is that
how you say it? Yeah, like an a of the
newmout sort of you that's good, that's sounded Swedish chef. Though, yeah,
I'll probably get taken a task. But from my memory
of German and college, that's right on the money. So uh,

(08:46):
Like I said, he didn't call it imprinting at the time,
but he did study the gray lag geese and found
out that right out of the egg that they um
can attach to humans. And it was a big you know,
although they did in Rome and ancient China, Germans probably
thought they made it that up discovered it first. UM.

(09:06):
And another thing that Lawrence is criticized for, aside from
the Nazi affiliation, was that he was um. He very
readily made an anthrop what's called an anthropic shift, where
he took his findings about animals and was very eager
to extrapolate them onto humans as well, which some people
are like, whoa budd you haven't you haven't shown that

(09:27):
connection yet? You can't. That hadn't always work, No, but
there there has we'll see, like come to there's a
there's an understanding that yeah, there's something similar in humans
and other mammals too, as we'll talk about. Uh. So,
there was one experiment early on where he took some
goose eggs and separated them out into the control and

(09:49):
the experimental experimental group, and of course the experimental he
raised separate from the mother completely. All this sounds gonna
mean too, by the way. Yeah, so all imprinting experience
experiments are about as immoral as they get. Yeah, it's
like ripping the baby right out of the egg or
womb away from its mother, right and in saying like

(10:11):
to see what happens right like here, this gum boot
is your mother. Try growing up normal and socialized with
a gum boot for a mom. No, agreed, You know,
almost across the board, these animals, these are immoral, unethical experiments, agreed.
So the experimental geese only met with him, uh, not

(10:31):
the goose mom at all. And then eventually, to test
this out, what he did was he put them, uh,
he put the groups together, marked them, put him under
a box, and then basically sort of like the old
experience like Brady Bunch thing, to see who calls the dog,
which when the dog will come to He had someone
lift the box. He's on one side of the room,
the gooses on the other, and the ones who he

(10:53):
had raised came straight to him. Yeah, which all bet
when they lifted that box. It was adorable. A bunch
of confused duckling sticking around like what was that? Right?
You're my mommy Nazi man, right, the bearded nazis my mom. Uh.
So he finally named it filial filial imprinting. I think

(11:14):
filial filial imprinting. Yeah, And it's basically exactly what it
sounds like. It's that if you if you imprint, if
you introduced something or yourself to precocial bird at a
certain stage of development, it will say you're my parents. Yeah.
And he initially called that the critical period, right, is
the amount of time you had to do that? Yeah?

(11:36):
So he um his studies weren't quite as um like
well designed his later studies, but he basically said, like
he assumed, probably first ten minutes maybe an hour after
hatching is this critical period. And then he also took
it a step farther by saying it's irreversible. So once

(11:56):
once this duckling thinks the gum boot as its mom,
it's always going to be stuck with that duck until
you eat it. So Lawrence like really put a lot
out there, and he really moved evolutionary biology ahead to
a degree. Ethology is the field that he helped found. Um.

(12:17):
But we'll talk about some follow up studies that supported
and overturned some of his findings. Right after this, so

(12:45):
chuck Um, Lawrence comes up with filial imprinting right then
later studies in like the fifties and sixties, especially by
a guy named Eckhard Hess and Ao Ramsey who a
lab in Maryland specifically dedicated to studying animal imprinting, and

(13:06):
they had really great control conditions and they they really
refined Lawrence's findings. Yeah, and they studied Mallard ducklings again
with the ducks and um, they found that the most
sensitive period was thirteen to sixteen hours after hatching, which
was higher more hours than I think Lorenz had found. Correct. Yeah,

(13:31):
he he headed down to it like three or four hours,
right tops. Yeah, and this was I guess the ducklings
likes to have a little time to swim around and
get some food, maybe take a rest, and then they'll
start getting down to imprinting. Yeah, and he Um, I
thought this was super interesting. They also found that the
ducklings that had to go like jump through more hurdles

(13:52):
and go through more to find the parent formed a
stronger attachment. Just kind of makes sense, like you worked
harder for it. All right. I guess it's like that
Morrissey song. The more you ignore me, the closer I get. Man,
he's the best, the best, ye also the worst as
far as like canceling shows and like, I mean, dude,

(14:13):
cannot like I don't ever completed a full tour. There's
no way. It's like every Morrisey tour. Eventually, if you're
on the end of that tour, you might as well
not even have tickets because you're not gonna be seeing Morrisey. Alright,
that's my little soapbox about morris Finish your tour. That's right,

(14:34):
you mean I had that happened to us. You had
Morrisey tickets and see, ah was it recently? It was
in the last like two years. He should call every
tour like the Morrissey potential to potential tour or first
half tour. Uh So back to the ducklings. They also

(14:56):
found that, um, they would imprint onto little paper machee
that they made, which is very sweet colored balls, uh
colored more than the white ones, which is interesting. I
guess I don't know. They must react to color more.
Even though the vision wasn't really a part. I thought
it was just sound. It depends smell and touch. So

(15:16):
there's a um. There's a PBS Nature special called um
My Life as a Turkey, and it's about a researcher
who is studying animal imprinting and specifically with turkeys. Turkeys
have astounding vision, yeah, just amazing vision. Like they can spot, like, um,
a screw head from a football field away. That's small.

(15:39):
How do you know did they say screw head? Right? Well, yeah,
they're known for going and rooting out screw heads at
far long distances. They just stop point like a pig
within the truffles, right exactly, That's what turkeys are used for. Um.
But so turkey has very great vision, so I could
see color being an environmental cue. Smell, movement, touch. Yeah,

(16:01):
it's a big one al right. So another thing they
tried that did not work, which I thought was interesting
is going back even before they hatched and using auditory
cues in the egg and they found that didn't make
any difference. But it's a good thing to test. The
guy on the Nature thing though, found the opposite. Really yeah,
he um, he would talk turkey to the eggs. Oh

(16:25):
I thought he talked turkey once they were born. No,
he's while they were eggs. He talked turkey to get
them used to it, right, Yeah, and then that's pretty
good turkey. And then um, after that, uh, when they
were when they were hatched, they he talked turkey again
to them and apparently they came right over. But smells

(16:45):
also a big one too. The inside of the egg
probably smells a lot like the mom. Yeah, you know
that makes sense. So all these environmental cues add up
to what the what this little hatchling is basically mindlessly
following because again, all of this imprinting stuff has found
that animals at least are hardwired to go seek out

(17:07):
and form these these attachments. Yes, and they also found
that there that critical period was even longer when they
kept them isolated from birth. So they kept them completely
socially isolated, they would have up to twenty hours to imprint.
And this caused researcher name, oh boy, uh well, dav Slukan,

(17:35):
great name. He said, it's actually not a critical period.
Let's call it a sensitive period, right semantics if you
ask me. Yeah, but it makes a pretty good point.
It's basically saying like, this thing is not Yes, it
appears to be hardwired, but it's also malleable in the
face of nurture, in the face of the environment. It
can be postponed, it can be m altered. Uh, it's

(17:59):
not sure versus nurture. It's nature and nurture in conjunction
with one another. And so all of this filial imprinting
that Lawrence first identified and really started systematically studying, and
that was later carried on in birds um also led
to the discovery that birds also um imprint sexually as

(18:21):
well as fill, and depending on what they attached to
filially they will um. Their sexual attachments or sexual preferences
will also be altered later on in life. So, in
other words, a bird that is raised by a human
will eventually try and mate with humans, even in the

(18:44):
presence of other birds of that species. Crazy. Yes, And
the reason why they think is because um, the bird
is basically identifying with what it's taking as its own species. Right,
So it will say a, well, my parent is a human,
ergo I must be a human, and therefore I want

(19:06):
to get with a human. It's a very confused bird, right,
But there's something that they've also found that refines this
whole thing even further, and that is that sexual imprinting
is basically blocked. They're sexually blind, is what they call it,
to the person that raised them. So while they might
be attracted to humans, they're not going to be attracted

(19:27):
their human parent. And there's actually something which, um, we
should do an incest episode. I should, Um, that sounds
like it's you just pulled that out of thin air,
but it's remarkably similar. Yeah, there's something that's been noted
in humans called the Westmark effect, which we'll have to
do an incest episode. But super interesting, especially coming from like, um,

(19:50):
it's like a clinical standpoint of viewpoint. Yeah sure, and
not just like let's do a show on incests gross
the end, you know, look at it sociologically. That sounds
like a stuff. Uh. Back to the birds. Another interesting
finding here when they were when they studied the sexual imprinting.
Initially it was with jackdaws, which are sort of like crows,

(20:11):
and they found that there were different types of imprinting
occurring as they mature. So, in other words, one of
those jackdaws eight with humans flew with crows, but made
it with Jackdaws. Right, So that suggests that they were partying. Dude,
there are these um so well rounded jackdaws. But it

(20:32):
suggests that there are the the different sensitive periods rather
than just one right, fourteen to sixteen hours after hatch
hats right? Right? Um and it you maybe you have
a filial imprinting like pretty early on. That's the first one,
and then sexual imprinting comes after that. Who knows? Who knows? Um, Well,

(20:57):
we'll talk more about Remember I said Lawrence was accused
of making the anthropics shift a little too soon. Sure, well,
he was vindicated to a large extent. Because a lot
of this does apply to mammals as well. We'll talk
about that right after this. Before we talk about mammals.

(21:37):
Those this quote that I'm meant to read before the
last break, he talked about the guy who talked turkey,
Joe Hutto, and he has quote he said, um, when
the when the first pulse emerged, he made his turkey sound,
and as Joe recounts, the pulse turned his head, its
eyes met Joe's and quote, something very unambiguous happened in

(22:00):
that moment. Quote true love and the cute. It is cute,
but a little creepy. You know, he's like, you know,
we met, our eyes met, and it was and it
was unambiguous. Yeah, so anyway, sorry about it. I just
had to throw that in there. Nice Joe hutto turkey lover. Yeah,
go watch my life as a turkey pbs. Uh, let's

(22:23):
say turkey lover and jest he was a scientist. Oh yeah,
he's not a creep. No, creeps don't use boards like
unambiguous to describe connection. They say get in my van. Right. Alright,
So mammals UM, this is not exactly, strictly speaking imprinting,
but they've sort of expanded over the years of definition

(22:45):
to include, you know, like what happens if you rip
a monkey away from its mom, which has been done
yes by a guy named Harry Harlow in the fifties
and sixties, the more despicable scientists involved in animal testing.
As a matter of fact, Harlowe's tests with UM filial
imprinting among mammals and monkeys in particular UM led to

(23:08):
the animal rights movement. It definitely gave its steam and
a lot of public support after UM articles and news
stories were released about Harlow and when he was vilified,
he did not buckle under public opinion. He is very
famously quoted as who could ever love a monkey? Um?

(23:29):
Everybody but you. That's what he said in response to
being criticized, who could ever love a monkey? Like, what's
your problem? Idiots? It's a monkey? Yeah, that's yeah. I
don't get that. They shouldn't be in charge of running
tests about filial imprinting with monkeys. They can just sit
there on the sidelines and hate animals. Yeah, watch TV

(23:50):
or something. Yeah, I agreed. Um, watch what was the
broader movie about monkey desk Project X? Yeah that one,
just watch that on a loop. But the working title
was monkey see Monkey do Oh. You're probably right? Um,

(24:10):
all right, So back to mammals, right. Um. They did
some studies in the ninete nineties a researcher named Keith
Kendrick where they and this one doesn't seem like too
much of a stretch, they switched sheep and goats at birth,
and um, they were allowed contact social contact with their
own species, but they were raised by their adoptive parents,

(24:31):
like the baby sheep was raised by the goat, but
they were still allowed to commingle with other sheep. And
it still worked. It turned out that they preferred to
mate with the species of the adopted parent adopted mother.
But they also found very um remarkably or notably, that
it's reversible as well. Yes, they wanted to see how

(24:54):
it would hold upright, So once a year they would
bring them all back together, be like, mingo, have some
there's some cheese plate over there. They play a little music.
This is after right after they had removed them from
the opposite species, put them back with their own species,
and once a year they said, hey, remember those goats

(25:15):
that you like so much? Oh, it was like that
up okay. So, and what they found was that among
females we could say females because we're talking about a
different species um the females showed a preference. They reverted
to their intra species preference. So like they showed like
a sexual preference for their own species after about one

(25:38):
to three years after being returned. Yes, right, yes, but males,
even after three years of being um ming commingled again,
they still showed a preference for the species that they
did imprinted on. Yeah, they like the goats are still like,
oh man, I remember those sheep. And the sheep said
the same thing about the goats exactly where we can

(26:01):
go party sheep. Oh. I thought that was really interesting though,
how I mean, there's no explanation, I guess, but how
the females and the males reacted. You know, years later
males are stubborn. Yeah, I think maybe that's all. It
is not not quite as agile. There's another way to

(26:24):
put it. So that's cheapen goats. The experiments called the
old switchero um. Harry Harlowe did some experiments and he
actually um as mean as his experiments were, he actually
managed to basically disprove an ongoing debate that had been

(26:44):
ongoing up until that point, um whether or not you
form an attachment or animals form an attachment based on
classical conditioning or based on some sort of evolutionary mechanism.
And so the classical conditioning people said, no, no, all,
it's it's all about food. So the animal goes up

(27:04):
and imprints on whatever is giving it food. And what
it's doing is it's making an imprint an attachment with
the person that gives it food. So you're you're looking
for the food and you insert the person who gives
you the food, and then you can remove the food
and you still have the attachment to the person that
gave you the food. Classical conditioning just standard Freud stuff, Right,

(27:27):
I punched that button. Food cocaine comes out exactly lots
more skinnery, but yeah, conditioning. Um. So with Harlow's experiments,
he took monkeys, stripped them from their mothers in some cases,
let them get nice and attached to their mothers, and
then stripped them from their mothers. Had all sorts of

(27:48):
different designs, but basically the upshot was he introduced them
to two different mothers. They're both in animate objects. One
was a monkey mother made of like wire with like spikes.
They well, they referred to it as the iron Maiden.
But this one I had food. The other one was
a inanimate monkey mother who was made of terry cloth.

(28:12):
It was soft, a little bit like a teddy bear
monkey teddy bear, so to a monkey. All of these
monkeys showed a preference for the terry cloth monkey mother.
Of course, they would go to this wire monkey mother
when they were hungry and would eat and then would
immediately go back to the monkey mother. When Harry Harlow
came in, I was like, whoa who would scare them all.
They would all go over to the terry cloth mother.

(28:34):
So he basically showed that it's not food. By extension,
it's not classical conditioning. It's it's comfort. It's contact. It
may be physical protection, but apparently it is um. It's
it's contact. And to make an anthropic shift, you can
extrapolate that on humans too, because there's a drug called

(28:55):
oxytocin that is released UM, especially on skin to skin contact,
which is why touching and raising UM an infant and
holding an infant is extraordinarily important, not just for its development,
but also for establishing bonds and contact with with that kid. Yeah,
and especially uh for adoptive parents. They say a lot

(29:18):
of skin on skin contact as soon as possible is
key to establishing that bond. But that's really neat because
it means, like the the imprinting is all about. It
basically proves family is what you make of it, or
family is whatever you find is your family. It does

(29:38):
it's not this pre defined structure, it's from a from infancy.
It's whatever you make of Yeah, that's true. Uh, And
then you know Harlowe was like him less and less
the more you talk about him, But on the other
side of the spectrum, what we've learned through all this
research is if you work in wildlife conservation, UM, they're

(30:00):
not just willy nilly and how they handle animals anymore.
They go through great pains and efforts to uh. Like
we mentioned the hand puppet. You know, they have Operation
Condor where they will raise these baby condors who are abandoned,
and they would dress their their hand puppet up to
look like a mama condor to feed it and basically
to do everything they can do to make sure that

(30:21):
they can live a regular life in the wild. And
they're not looking for that iron spiked iron maiden in
the jungle. Uh. And even down to like migratory patterns,
they'll use like the ultra light planes to later teach
these birds and they will dress up the plane to
look like a condor or whatever, a duck and you
know fly uh, you know, the the migratory pattern that

(30:44):
they should that they should use the route and there's
one of the researchers is inside the glider and that's
a condor on the p a going phone. And the
cutest thing ever, UM they found out that in uh,
I think it was in Japan that pandas um didn't

(31:04):
do so well when they were handled by humans too young,
so now they were panda suits not adorable, Like you
go to work, you punch in, you put on your
panda suit and you cuddle with baby pandas well. That
and it's not just human contact that can screw up,
like say a panda um. What they found is one

(31:25):
of the things that Harlow found was that UM imprinting
has a lot to do with socialization, so that even
if you just stick a baby with the wire spiky
iron maiden monkey mother, but you give that monkey twenty
minutes a day to socialize with other monkeys, it should
turn out okay. But even if it has the terry
cloth mother and it's kept in isolation from other monkeys,

(31:48):
they in turn tend to make um inadequate mothers is
what they call them, where they just like neglect their
children or smack them around, or just do all sorts
of stuff because as their mother was inanimate object, unethical stuff. Yeah,
I feel like we owe the band Iron made in

(32:09):
a big apology. Yeah, they're like the bad name. Yeah,
Like this is just supposed to be a torture device,
not for animals for you, I do. There's a cute
salon slide show called twenty Heartwarming Stories of Inner Species Adoptions.
That's literally the best thing on the Internet in this

(32:30):
suite is when you find like a horse cuddling with
a puppy or raising it as its own. There's apparently
a lioness who's well known in a preserve somewhere for
um stealing antelope calves and not eating them, but raising
them as her own because she wants a kid. It's

(32:51):
it's unbelievable. Animals teaching us the way right. You know,
who could ever love a monkey? Like? Who cares what
you look like? Who cares what what? Who cares if
I'm meant to eat you? You know I'm gonna raise
you as my own? Yeah? Well they I think they
often display like true nurturing love more than a lot

(33:12):
of humans do. Uh. If you guys want to know
more about this kind of thing, you can type animal
imprinting in the search bar how stuff first dot com
and also go check out our classic episode animal domestication.
Good one, pretty good um, and you can find that
on stuff you Should Do dot com. And I said
search bar in there somewhere, so it's time for listener mail.

(33:36):
I'm gonna call this gang article recommendation. Hi guys, my
name is Ciarra. I just finished listening to How Street
Gangs Work. I thought it would offer a piece of
literature as a suggestion to people interested in reading more
about the subject. It's called Gang Leader for a Day
by stood here Vin Kates. It's a sociological approach to

(33:56):
street gangs in Chicago. Started out as a Harvard dissertation
with then to Cash, asking what's it like to be
poor and black, and turned into seven years of befriending
a crack dealing gang leader in the projects. It's a
really great read, very interesting to see a first person
account of gang life from someone who was not raised
in the community which gangs prevailed, especially when you learn

(34:16):
that gangs started to protect black people at its base level.
So even when you see the gang violence brought forth
in the book pages, you also get to see the
gang members doing everything they can to protect their community members.
Uh the name. There's a New York Times article if
you're interested about the book, called if you want to
Observe Them, Join Them. I think it was like two
thousand eight is but I read it's awesome, So thanks

(34:39):
for all the work you guys put into the episodes.
I love constantly learning something new, except for when it's
about space. I don't want to learn anything about space. Okay,
it'll make me lose my mind. We thank you, Sira,
Thank you. CIA's appreciate it. Go listen to our episode
on the Sun or the make most people lose their

(35:01):
minds elevator to the Moon or Mars or the Moon.
Got a lot of them about the space. She's like, yep,
I've avoided them all. Um. We want to know what
will make you lose your mind topic wise or actually
in general. Yeah, or if you've ever imprinted on the
something non human? There you go. You can send us

(35:23):
all that info via Twitter at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has
always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff
you Should Know dot com For more on this and

(35:43):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot
com